It’s pretty obvious that there were two versions of the script. In the original version of the script, which has no doubt lain in a filing cabinet for several years, there’s the plot involving Gordon Gekko and Forgettable Protagonist. Then, some time after 2008, they shoehorned in a second plot which is a thinly veiled coverage of the early GFC, based on the Rolling Stones account of events, but this time Forgettable Antagonist loses.
It’s a train wreck between these two almost completely isolated plots. As movies about the Evils of Greed go, this was the laziest attempt to cash in on a topical issue since The Day After Tomorrow. And it made about as much sense.
A cameo by Bud Fox, the protagonist from the original Wall Street movie, both cunningly winks at Charlie Sheen’s womanising character in the excremental sitcom Two and Half Jokes and simultaneously undermines the entire character development arc of the first film. Far from being a wiser, chastised Bud Fox, this Bud Fox is a smug git who managed to poop all over Gordon Gekko. Far too Star Wars prequels-esque for my taste.
My final complaint is that because of the shotgun marriage of two plots, the movie has about two dozen endings. It’s like Return of the King all over again.
